October 12, 2025 • 28 mins
On this episode of the Weekly Roundup, Father Malone & Ripley Jean take a moment to remember some fallen comrades. They tell you what why your Halloween playlist is terrible. And they discuss the new theatrical releases Tron: Ares and the dog horror flick Good Boy.
GHOULARAMA Halloween Playlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/28iiNxSonLsEKokO7NAbvl?si=65421857c4f74b97
Father Malone
patreon.com/FatherMalone
FatherMalone71@gmail.com
@Midnight_Viewing
GHOULARAMA Halloween Playlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/28iiNxSonLsEKokO7NAbvl?si=65421857c4f74b97
Father Malone
patreon.com/FatherMalone
FatherMalone71@gmail.com
@Midnight_Viewing
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly roundup. I'm
Father Malone and as always here with me. My partner
in crime is miss Ripley Jean partner in everything. Okay,
I stand corrected, and I stand here saddened. I don't
mean to begin the show on a downer, but I
do want to say something about some recent passings. And
(00:58):
I'm not even talking about Dema. This is a canine
in Memoriam. Yes, I am tempted to throw that mournful
Waif song on here as a joke, but there's no
joking when you lose members of the family fans of
our show. No Chris Statue, his pup, Nibbler, has passed
to the great beyond. I had the distinct pleasure of
hanging out with young Nibbler. He was super cool and irreplaceable,
(01:21):
as is mister Puggles, my co host on A Little
Old Lady got mutilated late last night, Paul Waller's longtime
bestist of friends. Mister Puggles is off to terrify another
dimension with zoomies and grumbles. I was lucky enough to
meet him once via zoom but anyone who's listened to
Paul's show A Year in Horror has definitely heard mention
of that young gentleman. And all of this is just
(01:44):
more proof that we live in a horrifying and chaotic
universe where joy, actual joy, is the rarest commodity in existence.
I myself have lost a lot of family recently, in
addition to the human members of my Dwindling clan. Over
the past few years, I've said goodbye to mister van Go,
a fine orange tabby that loved to fetch and was
(02:06):
always deeply embarrassed when I caught him sleeping in my bed.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Go figure.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
After van we lost Marbles, Oh Marbles. She was a sphinx,
a mean old sphinx, like a little crone, like a witch,
and she fucking hated everyone, and she loved me. She
would dance when she saw me coming, and she had
the weirdest move. She would stretch and reach up with
both paws and do this crazy climbing motion on my leg.
(02:32):
Climb that tree, I'd shout. And then there was Frankenstein.
Frank was also a sphinx, and with all reference to
present company, he is the animal that I vibed with
on a sub atomic level. My introduction to Frankenstein was
I was sitting outside reading a book, and he kept
getting closer, sizing me up, and finally I started reading
to him, and he jumped up next to me and
(02:54):
stretched out, and that was that we were inseparable. I
miss him, I miss all of them every day. Maintaining
any kind of mental balance is difficult at the best
of times. I can only imagine what Chris and Paul
are experiencing. My sincere condolences. I am not gonna recover
when a certain someone kicks off. I'm not talking about you.
(03:15):
I'm talking about Foxy Brown. If you must know, no
one is gonna cry when you. I can't even finish
that fucking sentence. I almost cry trying to think of
a seg way. Now there is none. Okay, Before we
get to today's features, I wanted to introduce a new segment,
a seasonal segment. It is the Halloween time now we're
counting down the days. As such, it won't just be
(03:37):
ghosts and goblins that will come scrambling out of the darkness,
so will the Halloween playlists. And they're all garbage, you
know they are. So here's our segment. This is Halloween,
every single playlist is gonna have Monster Mash every single one.
When people were just making mixtapes, Monster Mash. Every novelty
(03:58):
vinyl you got around this.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Time of year.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Monster Mash good. It's a fucking classic.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Add it.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
You know Bobby Boris Pickett is from Somerville, Massachusetts. That's
the same hometown as my late wife. Add the song
I don't care if I just guilted you. If a
widower says, add Monster Mash, you add Monster Mash. Ghostbusters
is acceptable, but only just and that's only if it's
the Ray Parker original. If you're getting it from one
of those bullshit knockoff artists, cover the Halloween hit CDs,
(04:26):
Your Way Out of Line, Thriller of course, Vincent Price,
and Thoughts of Zombies. Add it the Halloween theme not
a novelty song, but it's perfect. Add all the tracks
from that soundtrack. That's what the randomizer is for. In
between Ghostbusters and Monster Mash, you should hear the tense
sounds of Lorie Strode realizing she's being followed. In fact,
(04:46):
any torture's horror theme is welcome. Elm Street tales from
the crypt Hell Raiser. All right back to the songs
Adam's family theme. Of course, unless there's a hammer involved.
Anything from Rocky Horror is acceptable. Don't Fear the Reaper.
Don't add this song. I get it. It's about suicide.
(05:07):
It's featured perfectly in the opening credits for the original
mini series of Stephen King's The Stand. It is, in fact,
the only good part of that entire mini series. And
it's in John Carpenter's Halloween, and it's tired, and all
anyone is gonna think about is Will Ferrell's gut rejected
Werewolves of London. Yes, bad Moon Arising, Yes, hungry like
(05:29):
the Wolf. No, I've heard it done before.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Don't do that.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Don't add songs that only have the most vague of connections,
just the title Your Bats out of Hell by Meat Loaf,
Your Devil Inside by Inexcesses, Your Abracadabras by Your Steve
Miller's ghost Town by the Specials gets a Pass. I
know it's about nightclubs getting shut down due to violence,
but I don't care. It's atmospheric as fuck. Not getting
(05:54):
the pass though. Zombie by the Cranberrys. They're not talking
about Daryl Dixon, They're not talking about Barbara at the
beginning of Night of the Living Dead, they're talking about
Northern Irish bloodshed? Did you hear about that car bomb?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And would you save me a snickers? There are songs
that seem like they have obvious connections but have none.
Clap for the Wolfman I hear a lot. That's a
song about Wolfman Jack, who does have ties to the holiday,
but it's also a song about getting your song on
DJ Wolfman Jack's radio show.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Don't do it.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I know you're all gonna add googu Muck, and that's great.
The Cramps is my favorite band of all time, and
anything to get their sound out there is a bonus
or a virus. But I'd like to hope you're adding
it because it appeared on the soundtrack to Texas Chainsaw
Massacre two, and not because of that musical number in Wednesday. Also,
(06:47):
listen to me closely. You already heard a snippet of
the Only Acceptable song from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Every
other song is about how great Christmas is and how
horrible Halloween is. Think about it and stop at it's
a Christmas movie. There is plenty of unexplored Halloween material
to choose from. Like what how about k Starr the
(07:09):
Headless Horseman. You'll be tempted by the dulcet tones of
Bing Crosby's cover, but you must resist. K Star and
her orchestra bring the entire holiday to life, and it's
a classic, and everyone will think you've got taste.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
When the spooks have a Medna jambree, they break it
up with a fiendish.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Clean goals are bad, but the one that's cursed is
the headless Austande's the worst way.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
He goes down and across the land.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
That oh, it is not an all on his hand,
and demons take one look and grow.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Other classics. I put a spell on you. Nina Simone's version,
Is that sacrilege? No, because screaming Jay Hawkins is better
served by little demon.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Use that.
Speaker 6 (08:00):
Rock the great little demon blowing and stopped fire in
his eyes this move from his head.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
You gotta female cool to hear the.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Words not o'b scure enough or too old for you?
Too bad because you're also in the screaming neighborhood with
screaming the lord such you can use murder in the
graveyard or Jack the Ripper. It's your choice, but only
a fool would pass up the opportunity to watch an
entire crowd of costumed characters twitch involuntarily at the ripper's whistle.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
With a little black bag. I guess also time.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
You gotta have Ghouls Night Out by the Misfits for
the ladies. Also for the ladies. Superstition by Stevie Wonder,
just because anything by Stevie is for the ladies. It's
a great song, and it's in the Things.
Speaker 7 (08:59):
On the Wall.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
How about Dead Souls by Joy Division add that, add
anything by She Wants Revenge. Look, I'm gonna throw a
link to my Halloween playlist in the show notes. It's
called Gula Rama. But I also want to know what
you're listening to as the days grow short and the
shadows grow long. Hit me up with that information and
enjoy my playlist. You know what song is definitely going
(09:31):
to be on there, Lou Reed's Halloween Parade. I find
it to be the most relatable song at this time
of year.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
But there ain't no Harry and no Virgin Marry. You
won't hear those voices again, and Johnny Rio and Rotten Rita,
you never see those faces again. This Halloween is something
to be sure, especially to be here with them. There's
(10:02):
the Born Again Loses and the Lavender Boozes, and some
crack team from Washington Heights, the boys from Avenue B,
the Girls from Avenue D, A Jacobill and Tights. This
celebration somehow gets me down, especially when I see you're
not around.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
There's no pet of the.
Speaker 8 (10:28):
Ship.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Thank you, HP.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
I'm angling to get Ripley featured on Stupid Petricks, and
Ripley gets her due this week in more ways than one.
I squeezed her out of last week's episode nearly entirely,
but I'm doing penance now.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
This is good boy.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
I guess I'm next.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
I shall never come here.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
When I saw the trailer for a horror movie from
the family Dog's perspective, I had the same reaction I
had when I saw the trailer for Backdraft. How what
the fuck have we gone this long without somebody making
a film? It's so insanely simple? How fucking oblivious are
we all? Everyone loves horror, Everyone loves dogs. Although there
(12:11):
is a stumbling block, and if you watch the trailer
and you own a dog, it hit you before the
coming soon hit the screen. We love dogs, We want
to see dogs in movies, but we don't want to
see dogs in peril, and we definitely don't want to
see them harmed or killed. So the premise of the
film is an intriguing one, but it's also kind of
a dare.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Let me assure you, without giving anything away, you can
see this movie, but should you. Yes, it's a fucking achievement.
Indy the Dog actor who stars in Good Boy, should
have his name added to the pantheon of animal stars
beside Benji and Rin Tin Tin and Lassie and Jed
and Darla. If you don't know those last two, welcome
(12:52):
to midnight viewing. There's a lot you need to catch
up on. This dog puts in a performance. Maybe it's
the Gary Cooper Steve a Queen kind of performance where
Indy's just be in Indie, But I'd counter that the
dog is way more expressive than either of those actors.
The film is nearly silent, and while the narrative is
at times purposely confusing, Indy's place in it and his motivations,
(13:13):
never are Indy the dog playing a dog named Indy
is in fact director Ben Leonberg's pet, and I can't
really envision another scenario where it would have been this
effective unless you've trained dog from birth to do everything
in a script. So the story is Indie's owner, Shane,
has a terminal illness, though it seems to be in remission. Shane,
(13:34):
after his last hospital stay, has chosen to aescu city
life and take up residence in his grandfather's secluded cabin
in the woods. The electricity is shoddy, the weather is terrible,
Shane is frequently in the grips of a nostalgic reverie
or something much worse, and the sounds from the basement
are nothing less than disturbing, and Indy has to deal
(13:54):
with all of it. There are scarce scenes that are
super effective in this flick, and overall it's a beauty
rendered film. You get used to the fact that our
point of view is no higher than three feet off
the ground for the entire film really quickly, as you
do the fact that every human is basically just a
set of legs or a silhouette. The atmosphere is killer,
and there are moments of genuine shock, and yet something
(14:18):
just doesn't quite hang. Everything individually is working like Gangbusters,
but as a whole it feels oddly disjointed. Those scare
scenes that I mentioned as effective. They start out with
slow and quiet setups with mounting dread, and at the
end there's a good jump scare. But somewhere between setup
and payoff there's always an odd disconnect. It may be
(14:40):
the filmmaker working against that central problem we don't want
to see in any peril or panic, but somehow he's overcorrected,
because as good as any individual scare or scene happens
to be, you never get the sense that the dog
is going to come to harm, and the film ultimately
makes the same fucking choice that nearly every horror movie
has been made lately. Horror is grief everybody in any event,
(15:04):
you need to go see Good Boy. It's in the
theaters now. It deserves your money. I don't know how
the filmmaker is gonna follow this up with something else,
unless he's been making something with another pet of his
for the past few years.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
But Good Boy is it worth a look?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
All right, programs, let's talk tron.
Speaker 9 (15:23):
Since time began, man has gazed at the stars, and
he has wondered, am I alone? So much talk of
AI and big tech today, virtual world?
Speaker 5 (15:46):
What are they gonna look like when we get there. Well, folks,
we're not going there. They are coming here. I would
like you to meet Aris, the Ultimate Soldier. He's biblically strong,
(16:09):
lightning fast, supremely intelligent, and if he is struck down
on the battlefield, I will simply make you another.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
You think you're in control of this, You're.
Speaker 8 (16:33):
Not what I am.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
I'm looking for something, something I do not understand.
Speaker 9 (17:06):
Hang on, malfunctioning program?
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Who wants to live? Why is that? It's just a.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Fascinating I've now seen every iteration in the theater. I
(17:46):
remember when the first film was released and asking my
cousin Bruce what Tron meant. I was nine. He said,
it's a nickname. His real name is Electronics. And on
some level I still believe that to be true. Okay,
the groundbreaking first film that nobody went to but is
the definition of not just a cult hit, but a
wildly influential one. I figure you know the story and
(18:08):
the story of its sequel from twenty years later now
fifteen years ago. But there is one thing I did
want to touch on about those previous films. The first
film's world was the game Grid, and that was created
and controlled by the MCP through Encom. The second film
does not take place in that world. The second film
is The Grid, and that was constructed by Flynn Kevin
(18:31):
Flynn's program Clue, also at Encom. The new film, tron
Ares takes place in neither of those. This one is
a whole new grid under the control of the Dellinger Corporation.
Thus everything is red and not blue or white. That's
David Dellinger's grandson running the show these days, so Dellinger
and by extension, Sark and by extension, the MCP itself
(18:51):
was played by David Warner. His grandson was hinted at
in tron Legacy, with Killian Murphy playing the role. This
film has Evan Peters from America Horror Story step into
the part instead. Something tells me that Killian Murphy wouldn't
have been quite so apoplectic in his portrayal. I'm not
saying Peters as bad. I love him, and I'm still
holding out for a James Cagney biopic starring him. It's
(19:12):
just that he does a lot of screaming. This is
a sequel, not a reboot. The first film ended with
Flynn brought back to the world and taking over Encom.
The sequel ends with Flynn merging with the Grid to
allow his son Sam and newly created organism Cora to
get out and into our world, where they've both disappeared
entirely so. Tron Legacy began with Flynn's son, inheritor of Encom,
(19:34):
who's always searching for his dad, doing some mad tech,
and then base jumping off a skyscraper. Tron Aries begins
with Eve Kim played by Greta Lee, who's inherited Encom
from her sister who's gone missing. By that, I mean
she's dead, but if there's a sequel, I bet we're
going to get a digital version of her. We meet
Eve snowmobiling down a treacherous mountain peak before engaging in
(19:55):
some mad tech and solving the film's central problem. A
little dramatic mirroring is fun at all, but the last
movie didn't exactly have a coherent plot line, so maybe
don't do that. That central problem is that both Encom
and Dellinger Corps are in an arms race for the
Permanence Code. Instead of sending humans into the computer, they're
pulling programs into our world, but they only last twenty
(20:18):
nine minutes. Before derezing. It makes sense for the company
to be offering on demand weapons and soldiers to man them.
From a storyline point of view, It's just that I
don't give a shit to see them here. I know
I've mentioned this before, but this is an Adams family situation.
Wouldn't it be a who to see Gomez buying lettuce?
Speaker 7 (20:35):
No?
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Not really, I live in this stupid world. I came
to a movie theater to see the grid, the light cycles,
the bizarre high line matches, guards that look like they've
been dressed from a sporting good section of an O'Reilly
auto parts Alarm bells went off in tron ares from
the opening moments for me, a full two minute recap
(20:56):
of the previous films, the players, their places, or lack
thereof in the coming narrative. It might as well have
been a Star Wars opening kroll for how clumsy it
all was. And then the score kicked in and the
film began, and I was hooked. God damn it. I've
said previously, if there's any one thing that's unassailable across
this franchise, it's the soundtrack. Each one is so goddamn
(21:19):
perfectly attuned to the visuals. This is no exception. This
isn't a Trent resnor Aticus Ross soundtrack. It's nine inch
nails and honestly, I can't think of the last time
that the score was not only doing as much heavy
lifting to create mood and atmosphere, but was actually succeeding
like this one does. This soundtrack was a marvel. It
(21:40):
made action more breathless, emotions more deeply felt, and it
added this indefinable gravitas to the whole thing. Side note,
Ross and Resner, like Daft Punk before them, show up
in the film Daft Punk where DJs at a club,
Ross and Resner are fighter pilots trying to take down
a recognizer. It helps that the whole thing is gorgeously shot.
(22:01):
Every scene you can tell has been lavished with attention
and care. That shouldn't be a point of discussion with
a one hundred and eighty million dollar feature, but even
that isn't assured in the current Hollywood landscape. The action
is superlative here, that's hand to hand as well as vehicular.
I think the action here is actually stronger than it
was in Superman. Now let's talk aries aries. The Ultimate
(22:22):
Grid Warrior designed by Dellinger to not only be his
standard bearer, but Aries is also the new MCP, although
with rolls slightly reversed. In the first film, Sark and
a Dellinger answered to the MCP. Here the MCP answers
to Dellinger and he can deres them in either world.
Aries is basically Tron, the character Tron, if Tron had
(22:46):
started out with a head full of bad wiring and
eventually had to start making moral decisions and become the
blue boy scout we barely know and barely love. Isn't
it hilarious that this whole film series is called Tron
and he's only kind of in the first film and
virtually not the second, and he is not at all
in Aries anyway, Aries himself is kind of a fascinating character,
(23:06):
and you're on the journey with him from the moment
we meet him, because he is too He begins questioning
his programming nearly immediately, and always without lines of dialogue.
I don't know what your opinion of Jared Lado is.
All I hear is hate for him.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Lately.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
It's of the he's a creeper variety. I don't care,
because that's just the latest angle of hatred towards him.
I get it, he's a pretty boy who rocketed to
acting fame and then he decided to be a rock star,
and he succeeded at that too. But I have never
seen a bad performance from him.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
But the joker, Shut the fuck up. That was thug
a joker.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
He may not be to your liking, he wasn't to
my liking, but it was a committed performance, and a
fucking good one at that.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
I believed him.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I always believe him, from Jordan Catalano right up to Ares,
and his performance here is the cleanest I think I've
seen from him. No tics, no actorly bullshit, just a
confused character trying not only to understand his own agency,
but a place in one of two worlds where one
of them is hunting him down and the other one
he can only exist in for no longer than thirty minutes.
(24:11):
It's a cool story, and unlike the last film, you
don't have to stare at CGI Jeff Bridges with such
a detached horror that you have no idea what any
of the scenes he's in are actually about. And I
want to point out one sequence in particular. You know
how every film's attempt for the past forty years to
visualize cyberspace has been laughably terrible. Is this a spinning
(24:31):
information cube? I see before me? It's handle turned toward
my obscenely pixeled cursor. Lawnmower man hackers, you remember, well,
they give us a scene where Dellinger hacks into the
Ncom mainframe. It's Aris in his team on a mission
impossible style sequence, and it's fucking great. Special shout out
to Jody Turner Smith as Athena. She's Airy's right hand
(24:54):
and eventual arrival. I remember her as one of the
best things from the Nightflyer series from twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
If you haven't seen that, give it a watch. Now.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Listen, the script here is halfway to where it needed
to be. Maybe one to two more drafts were necessary,
and after that they needed someone with an ear for
language to come in and rewrite all of the dialogue, not.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Some of it, all of it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Also, please stop adding comic relief characters to films unless
they're actually funny. Don't rely on the actor. Otherwise, you
just have characters doing and saying the things that we've
seen be funny in the past, and that's not enough.
Either make us laugh or drop the character. A lot
of the plot here makes no sense. A lot of
the situations seem pulled out of some bullshit screenwriting book.
(25:39):
Stop reading those. They're written by people who are not
famous for screenwriting. It's like listening to a guidance counselor
you think those fifteen minutes they met with you over
a four year period qualifies them to put you on
a path for the rest of your life. There are
some genuine surprises to be had in tron Ares, none
of which I'm going to spoil here, but there's a
sequence that made me gasp multiple times, and the ending
(26:01):
is set up for another sequel, which I'm sure we're
gonna get sometime in twenty thirty two. I didn't expect
to like this movie at all, and now I want
to watch it again. Sure, no, I'm not sneaking you in.
We'll wait for streaming. That is going to do it
for the weekly round up, tune in this Friday to
midnight viewing. We've got the next two episodes of the
final season of Tales from the Dark Side.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Spoiler alert. We loved them.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Check that out. Meanwhile, over on the Patreon page, that's
patreon dot com slash fatherm Alone. You can hear that
episode right now, as well as new series Moranis Fest,
where frequent collaborator HP and I are looking at the
cinematic efforts of Rick moranis also on the Patreon. You'll
find a Little Old Lady Got Mutilated late last night.
That's the other series I'm doing. That's the one with
(26:45):
Paul Waller from A Year in Horror. We are taking
a journey through the werewolf movies of past decades, starting
with the granddaddy of them all, The Wolfman from nineteen
forty one. Both those shows are available now, but if
money's tight, and I know they are, you can do it.
Was a huge favor just by liking the show or
giving it five stars, or if you're an Apple, write
(27:05):
a positive review. That would fucking open up so many
possibilities for us, and it would be greatly appreciated. Until
next time. Here's a bit from Tron because the other
film is mainly barking. Yeah, like that, extract.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
The code and to lead the carrier.
Speaker 6 (27:22):
That's is, sir, extracting the permanent code to lead the
carrier from a grid end from your world. Once upon
a time, there was a weapon and its name was Garris,
and every sobay every command to Julian Dillinger, and Julian
Dillinger made a trillion dollars and wrote his name on
the face of time in blood.
Speaker 5 (27:43):
Whatever peptag error is behind these feelings, I'm going to
find it and rip it out of you.
Speaker 6 (27:50):
Do I make myself clearer perfectly, program dismissed. The creature
also said I am fearless, and they'refore powerful.
Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly roundup. I'm
Father Malone and as always here with me. My partner
in crime is miss Ripley Jean partner in everything. Okay,
I stand corrected, and I stand here saddened. I don't
mean to begin the show on a downer, but I
do want to say something about some recent passings. And
(00:58):
I'm not even talking about Dema. This is a canine
in Memoriam. Yes, I am tempted to throw that mournful
Waif song on here as a joke, but there's no
joking when you lose members of the family fans of
our show. No Chris Statue, his pup, Nibbler, has passed
to the great beyond. I had the distinct pleasure of
hanging out with young Nibbler. He was super cool and irreplaceable,
(01:21):
as is mister Puggles, my co host on A Little
Old Lady got mutilated late last night, Paul Waller's longtime
bestist of friends. Mister Puggles is off to terrify another
dimension with zoomies and grumbles. I was lucky enough to
meet him once via zoom but anyone who's listened to
Paul's show A Year in Horror has definitely heard mention
of that young gentleman. And all of this is just
(01:44):
more proof that we live in a horrifying and chaotic
universe where joy, actual joy, is the rarest commodity in existence.
I myself have lost a lot of family recently, in
addition to the human members of my Dwindling clan. Over
the past few years, I've said goodbye to mister van Go,
a fine orange tabby that loved to fetch and was
(02:06):
always deeply embarrassed when I caught him sleeping in my bed.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Go figure.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
After van we lost Marbles, Oh Marbles. She was a sphinx,
a mean old sphinx, like a little crone, like a witch,
and she fucking hated everyone, and she loved me. She
would dance when she saw me coming, and she had
the weirdest move. She would stretch and reach up with
both paws and do this crazy climbing motion on my leg.
(02:32):
Climb that tree, I'd shout. And then there was Frankenstein.
Frank was also a sphinx, and with all reference to
present company, he is the animal that I vibed with
on a sub atomic level. My introduction to Frankenstein was
I was sitting outside reading a book, and he kept
getting closer, sizing me up, and finally I started reading
to him, and he jumped up next to me and
(02:54):
stretched out, and that was that we were inseparable. I
miss him, I miss all of them every day. Maintaining
any kind of mental balance is difficult at the best
of times. I can only imagine what Chris and Paul
are experiencing. My sincere condolences. I am not gonna recover
when a certain someone kicks off. I'm not talking about you.
(03:15):
I'm talking about Foxy Brown. If you must know, no
one is gonna cry when you. I can't even finish
that fucking sentence. I almost cry trying to think of
a seg way. Now there is none. Okay, Before we
get to today's features, I wanted to introduce a new segment,
a seasonal segment. It is the Halloween time now we're
counting down the days. As such, it won't just be
(03:37):
ghosts and goblins that will come scrambling out of the darkness,
so will the Halloween playlists. And they're all garbage, you
know they are. So here's our segment. This is Halloween,
every single playlist is gonna have Monster Mash every single one.
When people were just making mixtapes, Monster Mash. Every novelty
(03:58):
vinyl you got around this.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Time of year.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Monster Mash good. It's a fucking classic.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Add it.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
You know Bobby Boris Pickett is from Somerville, Massachusetts. That's
the same hometown as my late wife. Add the song
I don't care if I just guilted you. If a
widower says, add Monster Mash, you add Monster Mash. Ghostbusters
is acceptable, but only just and that's only if it's
the Ray Parker original. If you're getting it from one
of those bullshit knockoff artists, cover the Halloween hit CDs,
(04:26):
Your Way Out of Line, Thriller of course, Vincent Price,
and Thoughts of Zombies. Add it the Halloween theme not
a novelty song, but it's perfect. Add all the tracks
from that soundtrack. That's what the randomizer is for. In
between Ghostbusters and Monster Mash, you should hear the tense
sounds of Lorie Strode realizing she's being followed. In fact,
(04:46):
any torture's horror theme is welcome. Elm Street tales from
the crypt Hell Raiser. All right back to the songs
Adam's family theme. Of course, unless there's a hammer involved.
Anything from Rocky Horror is acceptable. Don't Fear the Reaper.
Don't add this song. I get it. It's about suicide.
(05:07):
It's featured perfectly in the opening credits for the original
mini series of Stephen King's The Stand. It is, in fact,
the only good part of that entire mini series. And
it's in John Carpenter's Halloween, and it's tired, and all
anyone is gonna think about is Will Ferrell's gut rejected
Werewolves of London. Yes, bad Moon Arising, Yes, hungry like
(05:29):
the Wolf. No, I've heard it done before.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Don't do that.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Don't add songs that only have the most vague of connections,
just the title Your Bats out of Hell by Meat Loaf,
Your Devil Inside by Inexcesses, Your Abracadabras by Your Steve
Miller's ghost Town by the Specials gets a Pass. I
know it's about nightclubs getting shut down due to violence,
but I don't care. It's atmospheric as fuck. Not getting
(05:54):
the pass though. Zombie by the Cranberrys. They're not talking
about Daryl Dixon, They're not talking about Barbara at the
beginning of Night of the Living Dead, they're talking about
Northern Irish bloodshed? Did you hear about that car bomb?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And would you save me a snickers? There are songs
that seem like they have obvious connections but have none.
Clap for the Wolfman I hear a lot. That's a
song about Wolfman Jack, who does have ties to the holiday,
but it's also a song about getting your song on
DJ Wolfman Jack's radio show.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Don't do it.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I know you're all gonna add googu Muck, and that's great.
The Cramps is my favorite band of all time, and
anything to get their sound out there is a bonus
or a virus. But I'd like to hope you're adding
it because it appeared on the soundtrack to Texas Chainsaw
Massacre two, and not because of that musical number in Wednesday. Also,
(06:47):
listen to me closely. You already heard a snippet of
the Only Acceptable song from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Every
other song is about how great Christmas is and how
horrible Halloween is. Think about it and stop at it's
a Christmas movie. There is plenty of unexplored Halloween material
to choose from. Like what how about k Starr the
(07:09):
Headless Horseman. You'll be tempted by the dulcet tones of
Bing Crosby's cover, but you must resist. K Star and
her orchestra bring the entire holiday to life, and it's
a classic, and everyone will think you've got taste.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
When the spooks have a Medna jambree, they break it
up with a fiendish.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
Clean goals are bad, but the one that's cursed is
the headless Austande's the worst way.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
He goes down and across the land.
Speaker 4 (07:37):
That oh, it is not an all on his hand,
and demons take one look and grow.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Other classics. I put a spell on you. Nina Simone's version,
Is that sacrilege? No, because screaming Jay Hawkins is better
served by little demon.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Use that.
Speaker 6 (08:00):
Rock the great little demon blowing and stopped fire in
his eyes this move from his head.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
You gotta female cool to hear the.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Words not o'b scure enough or too old for you?
Too bad because you're also in the screaming neighborhood with
screaming the lord such you can use murder in the
graveyard or Jack the Ripper. It's your choice, but only
a fool would pass up the opportunity to watch an
entire crowd of costumed characters twitch involuntarily at the ripper's whistle.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
With a little black bag. I guess also time.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
You gotta have Ghouls Night Out by the Misfits for
the ladies. Also for the ladies. Superstition by Stevie Wonder,
just because anything by Stevie is for the ladies. It's
a great song, and it's in the Things.
Speaker 7 (08:59):
On the Wall.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
How about Dead Souls by Joy Division add that, add
anything by She Wants Revenge. Look, I'm gonna throw a
link to my Halloween playlist in the show notes. It's
called Gula Rama. But I also want to know what
you're listening to as the days grow short and the
shadows grow long. Hit me up with that information and
enjoy my playlist. You know what song is definitely going
(09:31):
to be on there, Lou Reed's Halloween Parade. I find
it to be the most relatable song at this time
of year.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
But there ain't no Harry and no Virgin Marry. You
won't hear those voices again, and Johnny Rio and Rotten Rita,
you never see those faces again. This Halloween is something
to be sure, especially to be here with them. There's
(10:02):
the Born Again Loses and the Lavender Boozes, and some
crack team from Washington Heights, the boys from Avenue B,
the Girls from Avenue D, A Jacobill and Tights. This
celebration somehow gets me down, especially when I see you're
not around.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
There's no pet of the.
Speaker 8 (10:28):
Ship.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Thank you, HP.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
I'm angling to get Ripley featured on Stupid Petricks, and
Ripley gets her due this week in more ways than one.
I squeezed her out of last week's episode nearly entirely,
but I'm doing penance now.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
This is good boy.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
I guess I'm next.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
I shall never come here.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
When I saw the trailer for a horror movie from
the family Dog's perspective, I had the same reaction I
had when I saw the trailer for Backdraft. How what
the fuck have we gone this long without somebody making
a film? It's so insanely simple? How fucking oblivious are
we all? Everyone loves horror, Everyone loves dogs. Although there
(12:11):
is a stumbling block, and if you watch the trailer
and you own a dog, it hit you before the
coming soon hit the screen. We love dogs, We want
to see dogs in movies, but we don't want to
see dogs in peril, and we definitely don't want to
see them harmed or killed. So the premise of the
film is an intriguing one, but it's also kind of
a dare.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Well.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Let me assure you, without giving anything away, you can
see this movie, but should you. Yes, it's a fucking achievement.
Indy the Dog actor who stars in Good Boy, should
have his name added to the pantheon of animal stars
beside Benji and Rin Tin Tin and Lassie and Jed
and Darla. If you don't know those last two, welcome
(12:52):
to midnight viewing. There's a lot you need to catch
up on. This dog puts in a performance. Maybe it's
the Gary Cooper Steve a Queen kind of performance where
Indy's just be in Indie, But I'd counter that the
dog is way more expressive than either of those actors.
The film is nearly silent, and while the narrative is
at times purposely confusing, Indy's place in it and his motivations,
(13:13):
never are Indy the dog playing a dog named Indy
is in fact director Ben Leonberg's pet, and I can't
really envision another scenario where it would have been this
effective unless you've trained dog from birth to do everything
in a script. So the story is Indie's owner, Shane,
has a terminal illness, though it seems to be in remission. Shane,
(13:34):
after his last hospital stay, has chosen to aescu city
life and take up residence in his grandfather's secluded cabin
in the woods. The electricity is shoddy, the weather is terrible,
Shane is frequently in the grips of a nostalgic reverie
or something much worse, and the sounds from the basement
are nothing less than disturbing, and Indy has to deal
(13:54):
with all of it. There are scarce scenes that are
super effective in this flick, and overall it's a beauty
rendered film. You get used to the fact that our
point of view is no higher than three feet off
the ground for the entire film really quickly, as you
do the fact that every human is basically just a
set of legs or a silhouette. The atmosphere is killer,
and there are moments of genuine shock, and yet something
(14:18):
just doesn't quite hang. Everything individually is working like Gangbusters,
but as a whole it feels oddly disjointed. Those scare
scenes that I mentioned as effective. They start out with
slow and quiet setups with mounting dread, and at the
end there's a good jump scare. But somewhere between setup
and payoff there's always an odd disconnect. It may be
(14:40):
the filmmaker working against that central problem we don't want
to see in any peril or panic, but somehow he's overcorrected,
because as good as any individual scare or scene happens
to be, you never get the sense that the dog
is going to come to harm, and the film ultimately
makes the same fucking choice that nearly every horror movie
has been made lately. Horror is grief everybody in any event,
(15:04):
you need to go see Good Boy. It's in the
theaters now. It deserves your money. I don't know how
the filmmaker is gonna follow this up with something else,
unless he's been making something with another pet of his
for the past few years.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
But Good Boy is it worth a look?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
All right, programs, let's talk tron.
Speaker 9 (15:23):
Since time began, man has gazed at the stars, and
he has wondered, am I alone? So much talk of
AI and big tech today, virtual world?
Speaker 5 (15:46):
What are they gonna look like when we get there. Well, folks,
we're not going there. They are coming here. I would
like you to meet Aris, the Ultimate Soldier. He's biblically strong,
(16:09):
lightning fast, supremely intelligent, and if he is struck down
on the battlefield, I will simply make you another.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
You think you're in control of this, You're.
Speaker 8 (16:33):
Not what I am.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
I'm looking for something, something I do not understand.
Speaker 9 (17:06):
Hang on, malfunctioning program?
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Who wants to live? Why is that? It's just a.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Fascinating I've now seen every iteration in the theater. I
(17:46):
remember when the first film was released and asking my
cousin Bruce what Tron meant. I was nine. He said,
it's a nickname. His real name is Electronics. And on
some level I still believe that to be true. Okay,
the groundbreaking first film that nobody went to but is
the definition of not just a cult hit, but a
wildly influential one. I figure you know the story and
(18:08):
the story of its sequel from twenty years later now
fifteen years ago. But there is one thing I did
want to touch on about those previous films. The first
film's world was the game Grid, and that was created
and controlled by the MCP through Encom. The second film
does not take place in that world. The second film
is The Grid, and that was constructed by Flynn Kevin
(18:31):
Flynn's program Clue, also at Encom. The new film, tron
Ares takes place in neither of those. This one is
a whole new grid under the control of the Dellinger Corporation.
Thus everything is red and not blue or white. That's
David Dellinger's grandson running the show these days, so Dellinger
and by extension, Sark and by extension, the MCP itself
(18:51):
was played by David Warner. His grandson was hinted at
in tron Legacy, with Killian Murphy playing the role. This
film has Evan Peters from America Horror Story step into
the part instead. Something tells me that Killian Murphy wouldn't
have been quite so apoplectic in his portrayal. I'm not
saying Peters as bad. I love him, and I'm still
holding out for a James Cagney biopic starring him. It's
(19:12):
just that he does a lot of screaming. This is
a sequel, not a reboot. The first film ended with
Flynn brought back to the world and taking over Encom.
The sequel ends with Flynn merging with the Grid to
allow his son Sam and newly created organism Cora to
get out and into our world, where they've both disappeared
entirely so. Tron Legacy began with Flynn's son, inheritor of Encom,
(19:34):
who's always searching for his dad, doing some mad tech,
and then base jumping off a skyscraper. Tron Aries begins
with Eve Kim played by Greta Lee, who's inherited Encom
from her sister who's gone missing. By that, I mean
she's dead, but if there's a sequel, I bet we're
going to get a digital version of her. We meet
Eve snowmobiling down a treacherous mountain peak before engaging in
(19:55):
some mad tech and solving the film's central problem. A
little dramatic mirroring is fun at all, but the last
movie didn't exactly have a coherent plot line, so maybe
don't do that. That central problem is that both Encom
and Dellinger Corps are in an arms race for the
Permanence Code. Instead of sending humans into the computer, they're
pulling programs into our world, but they only last twenty
(20:18):
nine minutes. Before derezing. It makes sense for the company
to be offering on demand weapons and soldiers to man them.
From a storyline point of view, It's just that I
don't give a shit to see them here. I know
I've mentioned this before, but this is an Adams family situation.
Wouldn't it be a who to see Gomez buying lettuce?
Speaker 7 (20:35):
No?
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Not really, I live in this stupid world. I came
to a movie theater to see the grid, the light cycles,
the bizarre high line matches, guards that look like they've
been dressed from a sporting good section of an O'Reilly
auto parts Alarm bells went off in tron ares from
the opening moments for me, a full two minute recap
(20:56):
of the previous films, the players, their places, or lack
thereof in the coming narrative. It might as well have
been a Star Wars opening kroll for how clumsy it
all was. And then the score kicked in and the
film began, and I was hooked. God damn it. I've
said previously, if there's any one thing that's unassailable across
this franchise, it's the soundtrack. Each one is so goddamn
(21:19):
perfectly attuned to the visuals. This is no exception. This
isn't a Trent resnor Aticus Ross soundtrack. It's nine inch
nails and honestly, I can't think of the last time
that the score was not only doing as much heavy
lifting to create mood and atmosphere, but was actually succeeding
like this one does. This soundtrack was a marvel. It
(21:40):
made action more breathless, emotions more deeply felt, and it
added this indefinable gravitas to the whole thing. Side note,
Ross and Resner, like Daft Punk before them, show up
in the film Daft Punk where DJs at a club,
Ross and Resner are fighter pilots trying to take down
a recognizer. It helps that the whole thing is gorgeously shot.
(22:01):
Every scene you can tell has been lavished with attention
and care. That shouldn't be a point of discussion with
a one hundred and eighty million dollar feature, but even
that isn't assured in the current Hollywood landscape. The action
is superlative here, that's hand to hand as well as vehicular.
I think the action here is actually stronger than it
was in Superman. Now let's talk aries aries. The Ultimate
(22:22):
Grid Warrior designed by Dellinger to not only be his
standard bearer, but Aries is also the new MCP, although
with rolls slightly reversed. In the first film, Sark and
a Dellinger answered to the MCP. Here the MCP answers
to Dellinger and he can deres them in either world.
Aries is basically Tron, the character Tron, if Tron had
(22:46):
started out with a head full of bad wiring and
eventually had to start making moral decisions and become the
blue boy scout we barely know and barely love. Isn't
it hilarious that this whole film series is called Tron
and he's only kind of in the first film and
virtually not the second, and he is not at all
in Aries anyway, Aries himself is kind of a fascinating character,
(23:06):
and you're on the journey with him from the moment
we meet him, because he is too He begins questioning
his programming nearly immediately, and always without lines of dialogue.
I don't know what your opinion of Jared Lado is.
All I hear is hate for him.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Lately.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
It's of the he's a creeper variety. I don't care,
because that's just the latest angle of hatred towards him.
I get it, he's a pretty boy who rocketed to
acting fame and then he decided to be a rock star,
and he succeeded at that too. But I have never
seen a bad performance from him.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
But the joker, Shut the fuck up. That was thug
a joker.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
He may not be to your liking, he wasn't to
my liking, but it was a committed performance, and a
fucking good one at that.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
I believed him.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
I always believe him, from Jordan Catalano right up to Ares,
and his performance here is the cleanest I think I've
seen from him. No tics, no actorly bullshit, just a
confused character trying not only to understand his own agency,
but a place in one of two worlds where one
of them is hunting him down and the other one
he can only exist in for no longer than thirty minutes.
(24:11):
It's a cool story, and unlike the last film, you
don't have to stare at CGI Jeff Bridges with such
a detached horror that you have no idea what any
of the scenes he's in are actually about. And I
want to point out one sequence in particular. You know
how every film's attempt for the past forty years to
visualize cyberspace has been laughably terrible. Is this a spinning
(24:31):
information cube? I see before me? It's handle turned toward
my obscenely pixeled cursor. Lawnmower man hackers, you remember, well,
they give us a scene where Dellinger hacks into the
Ncom mainframe. It's Aris in his team on a mission
impossible style sequence, and it's fucking great. Special shout out
to Jody Turner Smith as Athena. She's Airy's right hand
(24:54):
and eventual arrival. I remember her as one of the
best things from the Nightflyer series from twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (25:00):
If you haven't seen that, give it a watch. Now.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Listen, the script here is halfway to where it needed
to be. Maybe one to two more drafts were necessary,
and after that they needed someone with an ear for
language to come in and rewrite all of the dialogue, not.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Some of it, all of it.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Also, please stop adding comic relief characters to films unless
they're actually funny. Don't rely on the actor. Otherwise, you
just have characters doing and saying the things that we've
seen be funny in the past, and that's not enough.
Either make us laugh or drop the character. A lot
of the plot here makes no sense. A lot of
the situations seem pulled out of some bullshit screenwriting book.
(25:39):
Stop reading those. They're written by people who are not
famous for screenwriting. It's like listening to a guidance counselor
you think those fifteen minutes they met with you over
a four year period qualifies them to put you on
a path for the rest of your life. There are
some genuine surprises to be had in tron Ares, none
of which I'm going to spoil here, but there's a
sequence that made me gasp multiple times, and the ending
(26:01):
is set up for another sequel, which I'm sure we're
gonna get sometime in twenty thirty two. I didn't expect
to like this movie at all, and now I want
to watch it again. Sure, no, I'm not sneaking you in.
We'll wait for streaming. That is going to do it
for the weekly round up, tune in this Friday to
midnight viewing. We've got the next two episodes of the
final season of Tales from the Dark Side.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Spoiler alert. We loved them.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Check that out. Meanwhile, over on the Patreon page, that's
patreon dot com slash fatherm Alone. You can hear that
episode right now, as well as new series Moranis Fest,
where frequent collaborator HP and I are looking at the
cinematic efforts of Rick moranis also on the Patreon. You'll
find a Little Old Lady Got Mutilated late last night.
That's the other series I'm doing. That's the one with
(26:45):
Paul Waller from A Year in Horror. We are taking
a journey through the werewolf movies of past decades, starting
with the granddaddy of them all, The Wolfman from nineteen
forty one. Both those shows are available now, but if
money's tight, and I know they are, you can do it.
Was a huge favor just by liking the show or
giving it five stars, or if you're an Apple, write
(27:05):
a positive review. That would fucking open up so many
possibilities for us, and it would be greatly appreciated. Until
next time. Here's a bit from Tron because the other
film is mainly barking. Yeah, like that, extract.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
The code and to lead the carrier.
Speaker 6 (27:22):
That's is, sir, extracting the permanent code to lead the
carrier from a grid end from your world. Once upon
a time, there was a weapon and its name was Garris,
and every sobay every command to Julian Dillinger, and Julian
Dillinger made a trillion dollars and wrote his name on
the face of time in blood.
Speaker 5 (27:43):
Whatever peptag error is behind these feelings, I'm going to
find it and rip it out of you.
Speaker 6 (27:50):
Do I make myself clearer perfectly, program dismissed. The creature
also said I am fearless, and they'refore powerful.
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